Who's Down With P-O-D (casts)?

This week, I took my first venture into podcasts. I had subscribed to a few before on iTunes, but I never really knew how they worked or what they were about. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised at just how many podcasts are out there & readily available for use in the English classroom!

The one I want to share with you today is the This I Believe series.


Every week, the This I Believe website publishes a new podcast that includes a selection of a number of This I Believe essays. This I Believe essays are statements of personal beliefs and are written by people from all around the world from all walks of life. Browsing through, you might find a piece by Muhammad Ali, a kindergartner, Bill Gates, a housewife, athletes - anyone and everyone you can think of. They even have recordings of essays that date back to the 1950's, when a radio show called This I Believe aired! It is an amazing website to browse around and a project that everyone can participate in.

The podcast is published once a week, and features at least one essay - you never know what you're gonna get from the selected piece! I love the This I Believe writing prompt and I love listening to all the different stories, so I would definitely like to use this podcast in my teaching.

What I would like to encourage my students to do is listen to the weekly podcast. I plan to use This I Believe quite a bit in my teaching, both for listening/reading and writing. I would ask students to take note of ones that stand out in particular to them, and create space for students to share them with one another and discuss.

As a teacher, I would listen to the podcast each week to keep myself fresh and listening to lots of different essays, as I'm always searching for ones that can relate to themes we're dealing with in class. One of my favorites that I plan to use is Jackie Robinson's This I Believe piece called "Free Minds and Free Hearts." This piece dates back to the 50's, and would tie in nicely with a unit on the civil rights movement- it has a great message behind it and paints a clear picture of some of the struggles Mr. Robinson had to face. I hope to be able to deal with issues of social justice in my classroom, and this podcast would work well to frontload a text such as Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals. Just as I would link Jackie Robinson's piece with this text, I would keep my ears open for other essays (in the podcast) that relate to other texts that we read throughout the year. Along the same lines, I would have students listen to different This I Believe pieces to find one that expresses a big idea or message that they take away from a piece of literature that we read together. For example, if we finished up Macbeth, I could have them search for This I Believe pieces that talk about the ways to reach your ambition, what type of person to be in the face of greed, or any theme or lesson that stuck with them from the play.

Ultimately, I would like to have my students write their own This I Believe essays and record them for submission to the website. After hearing a number of them throughout the year, they will be familiar with the format and guidelines of the piece, and know what it takes to make a really compelling statement of personal belief. I would love, for example at the end of the social justice unit I mentioned above, to have students reflect on what they are willing to stand up for in their lives, and write and record a piece on that topic. How awesome would it be to hear my students' voices on this podcast one day?

I also stumbled upon some other great podcast resources and ideas, including readings of various pieces of literature that are often studied in schools, such as Frankenstein on Learnoutloud.com. This would be really helpful for students who are auditory listeners or who would just like to listen to a story be read to them. I also got some great ideas from browsing around different Harry Potter fan podcasts. Many of these sites published reviews in their podcasts- of chapters, books, and film. I could have my students work in groups and each be assigned a chapter of a book or portion of a film to critique, review or just discuss on their podcast. This would be a great way to get students to collaborate on creating a response or reaction piece to something we read or watch in class - and by the end of the school year, we could have a whole archive of podcasts to go back and listen to! And it would be a great way for students to remember their experiences with literature - something they can always go back to!

All Around the World...

This week, I explored the learning site, ePals.
If you aren't familiar with ePals, I found this video extremely helpful.

What is ePals?
The tagline of this website reads, "Where Learners Connect." And that's just it - ePals is a website that creates a global community and a global classroom. Students in different towns, different states, different countries AND on different continents are able to connect, collaborate and become classmates. The site is set up so that teachers, students and even families can work together and share with people from anywhere around the world in a safe technological environment to create amazing pieces of work and new understandings.

Which features of ePals are most useful?

-One of the best features of this website is the possibilities it allows for students to collaborate with students from all over the world. Students can become familiar with different cultures, "visit" different places and "meet" different people just by clicking around on this website. This relationship with different cultures helps to make them seem less foreign to students and in doing so, makes the world a smaller place for them. I would hope that this would lead students to adopt a more global attitude in that they would be more accepting of others, rather than isolating themselves in their own culture and experiencing culture shock later on in life. It also makes for great opportunities to learn languages, or at the very least, play with the languages as they interact with one another.

-Another feature of this website that I think is awesome for teachers is the endless opportunities it provides for teacher collaboration! Since the advent of the internet, teachers have been able to do this more and more, but with the ePals website, teachers can begin to reach out to an exponential number of educators - and parents and students! Teachers can search for new lesson plans on this site, and I especially loved the feedback feature where teachers can post handouts, tests, or ideas to the website and receive critiques and comments from other teacher users. Teachers can also find inspiration from the many projects that they can get involved in or see other teachers doing, and through these, create totally unique learning opportunities for their students! Plus, the website is oober-organized and has so much information!! You can find forums, resources, libraries, teacher galleries - everything a teacher could need, all in one, easy to navigate website! It's a definite must-use teacher tool!

-More great features and ideas below...

How could I use this website in my teaching?

-One thing that I feel very passionate about in my future as an English educator is the use of multicultural texts. I am dedicated to introducing my students to different perspectives, different lifestyles and different cultures so that they can become familiar with them and be comfortable in the very diverse world in which we live! I want my students to be exposed to all of these so that even if they don't live in a diverse area, or interact with people different from themselves on a daily basis, they can learn to have respect for all walks of life and all different people. I was excited to see how useful ePals will be to help reach these goals and to supplement my multicultural texts that we read. If we read a text based on a character who lives in China, Africa, India, or anyplace for that matter, we can set up a connection with a classroom full of students the same age who live everyday in that culture and place! This would give my students great insight into the experiences of the characters and the cultures that are involved in the text. This would add so much wealth to the students' experiences and really make the story and setting come alive! Students could interview their "classmates" or collaborate on a project with one another, during which they can teach each other about their lives!

-I would love to use the Projects feature on ePals in my classroom one day! The types of projects we can get involved with are so diverse, creative and unique! I love the endless possibilities this creates for learning experiences for my students - that many other students are already participating in! Not only would this keep my teaching creative and changing from year to year, but it would engage my students in meaningful, long-lasting learning. To be able to extend the walls of our classroom to reach around the world, and to learn from and work with people from all over the globe is a really exciting and powerful experience for students to have. I could check back frequently to check for projects that are relevant to what we're doing or would just be awesome to be involved in - we can participate in whatever might be useful and/or enjoyable!

-Along the same vein of my goals for introducing students to different cultures, many of the ePals projects aim to create understandings of and experiences with different cultures. One that I came across that would do both of these things, and is extremely appropriate for this time of year is the "Holidays and Festivals Around the World" - where students for all over the world share their traditions (how awesome!) - and another called "The Way We Are" - in which students about the way they live. I would definitely like to get my students involved in these types of projects to become more familiar with different people, lifestyles and cultures. To engage learning that brings to light differences in cultures, in which students are actually learning from the members of that culture, is totally unique in today's classrooms, and is an experience that I would love to offer for my students.

-My favorite project that I feel is particularly relevant for the English classroom was the storytelling project. Getting my students active in something like this would encourage them to read and write for a purpose. I've seen many teachers try to engage their students in writing workshops - this project does just that, and in a much more effective way! I love the use of "digital storytelling" in this project versus regular storytelling because students are so in tune with images and visual pieces these days - it would be awesome to add another creative aspect to their writing pieces, and that's the digital piece in these stories do just that. I also think that the publication of their stories to a global audience adds a great deal of incentive for students to work harder on their pieces. An added layer to the positives of this project is the opportunity to learn the role of stories in different cultures, and how different cultures tell them. It would be really cool to look at the elements of stories that are valued in some cultures and not in others. This would be a really interesting study to conduct!

-A final thing I would really like to get my students working on is social action projects, in which students research a current issue that is relevant to their lives, their communities or their world, and then do something about it - take action. In these projects, students investigate whatever they'd like, and then make a change or get involved in some capacity - publishing a report on it, volunteering for a cause, writing to a politician, and so on. As I browsed through the projects and forums, I noticed that many of the titles - such as global warming - suggested that students would be discussing global issues. I would encourage my students to connect with others who are already active in those projects or discussion boards to create a plan to make an impact. In the case of global warming, students could each write a piece of how the climate change/global warming has begun to affect their area, and then compile these into giant image of the worldwide effects of global warming! Students could then talk about maybe sending this in to major leaders in the movement, like Al Gore, publishing their pieces in local papers, or thinking up ways to promote environmentally friendly practices. How amazing would this be? Then, students could continue the project to talk about what change has come about in relation to or as a result of their work.

-Lastly, I will definitely take advantage of all of the awesome teacher resources this website offers, especially the lesson plan forums, teacher gallery, and feedback tool. One of my greatest worries is that after grad school, I will not be able to get the feedback my classmates have given me, or the great ideas that I take away from each class. This website gives me an in to continue doing all of these things, and keep my instruction fresh, current, and relevant to my students, as well as network, get teacher tips, and stay involved in the education conversation.

I am really excited about ePals - check it out!

IMAGE-ination Creation!

I created this movie poster using BigHugeLabs!
This website offers users so many fun and easy-to-use "toys" that allow you to play around with your digital photos or ones you find online!
Some of my favorite toys on this website included the movie poster maker, the magazine cover maker, the motivator, the badge maker, and the captioner. The reason I liked all of these tools so much is because I immediately saw how useful they could be in an English classroom!

The movie poster maker: This would be a great tool to use to help students remember the important elements of a piece of literature or even a poem. Students can choose a picture to represent an important aspect of the story or message (can be anything! even a simple symbol that is important to them), list all of the characters, the author, an important date to the text (above I used the est. year of publication, but students could also include the season or time period that the story takes place), and in the directors section, they could write a brief summary of the story, or include a favorite quote or - something I've also seen done - list some important literary elements. My favorite aspect of the movie poster is the tagline. Creating a tagline for a novel, play, story or poem forces the student to think critically about the text and put the message, theme or significance of the piece into one concise line. Instead of a Rating (such as G or R), I might have students rate the story (two thumbs up, one thumb up) and share their reaction - why they liked it, or why they didn't. These could be hung up around the classroom, or, put into a collection in the student's portfolio so that they always have an easy reference to look back on and remember the story!

The magazine cover maker: This could be used very similarly to the movie poster, but I see this toy being more useful for students to more closely examine a character, theme, or conflict in a text. For example, students could create a scandalous magazine cover for The Crucible that talks about the effects of John & Abigail's affair (similar to many of the covers we've seen in the past year!), choosing or creating a picture to represent the topic, and coming up with many headlines that relate to the affair and the aftermath, such as Elizabeth Proctor: Stand by Your Man, or a title for an interview that might have been included. Or, students could do a cover on just one character from a story, creating headlines for articles that one might read about that person. This would be another creative way for students to represent a piece of literature that they could reference later on, or that I could hang up around the room. What might be even more creative would be to make this a class project, and have students create covers for all of the characters, themes, and conflicts, and then also do covers like Sports Illustrated and Martha Stewart Living to capture details like what the people in the story did for fun and what they ate or did with their homes. We could also create titles for magazines that would cover obituaries in a piece that involves a lot of death, and maybe even an Entertainment Weekly cover so that students could collaborate to create a collection of other titles or links that they think relate to the text (they could list movies, books, poems, songs, online videos, and things of that nature).

The motivator: I really liked this toy for its ability to have students choose one word to represent a character or a story. I would have students ask themselves questions such as: If this character stood for one thing, or inspired the reader in one area, what would it be? If this book taught the reader one lesson, what one word could that be summed up in? I would again, have students create or choose an image to represent that text, character, or a particular event or scene that illustrates the word they've chosen (for example, the Younger family from A Raisin in the Sun could represent pride). They could even do this sarcastically, and represent exactly what a character resists or totally does not represent (for example, Macbeth could sarcastically represent nobility or Abigail Williams could represent Puritans). Then, students could create a clever or witty line to go below the word that tells us why it's untrue (ex Abigail: Puritans: because lying, dancing, laughing in church, and drinking charms to kill Goody Proctor is the Puritan way). The non-sarcastic motivator lines would serve the same purpose: to challenge students to detail why the character or text represents that word. These could be hung up around the room as well as mini-works of art that send powerful messages for the students and stick with them as lessons that they learned (or didn't learn, for the sarcastic ones!)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.
created by: Flickr user Louisville Joe

The badge maker: This could be a fun way for students to represent a character in a story. They could choose a photo or draw one to represent a character, create a job title (either their real occupation in the story or give a label for their personality/habits - ex. Romeo: Lover at First Sight), name, possibly with a nickname, what company or group they might represent, and maybe a character bio in the text box. Or, for a historical text like The Crucible, I might stage a village discussion where each student is a character, and after making their badges, they could go around the "village" within our classroom and discuss with other characters whether or not they like them, what their relationship is like, what sort of issues they need to address, and things of that nature.


The captioner: This tool would be great to use for writing prompts. Students could choose an image that they like or react to in any way, and put a caption of what they think the person, animal, or object might be thinking or saying. I would ask students to bring these in and trade them, and have one of their classmates write a short story based off of the picture, incorporating in some way the caption on the picture. Students could also do this to compile comic books either based on their own writing, or they could choose images and create captions to make a comic book version of a story, novel or play that we read in class. So these would be great for creative writing and creative activities to do with literature.

One idea I have for The Crucible (I'm stuck on this since I'm currently observing a class that is reading the play) would be to frontload the unit with a picture of the Salem Witch Trials, one in which everyone is staged in very particular ways:

from: mtsu.com, History 3020 course page

I could put this picture up on our blog and ask each student to write a caption for what they think one of the characters might be saying or thinking. This would be a great "hook" to help students enter the play, and start to get inside the heads of the characters and exploring the issues we would soon encounter! Plus, it could be a really fun and creative activity for students!



I LOVE BigHugeLab.com and am so excited to use it!
It has so many other great tools that inspired new ideas for me as well - it is a must use for teachers, especially in English! It offers so many creative ideas to mix up what we can do with characters and the texts that we read!

Creative Commons Licensing

Isn't this photo great?


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.
photo by Flickr user chotda

I found this photo on the internet, just as I find many of my favorites online!
What you probably didn't know about many of the pictures you find on the internet is that they are offered under what is called a Creative Commons license, just as this one is - did you notice the information beneath it? That tells us that this photo is licensed, and what type of license it holds.


So what is a Creative Commons license? Creativecommons.org defines it as "a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright. [They] provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof."

What did I mean when I stated that the information below the photo tells us the type of license it carries? Creative Commons offers different options for creators to choose from on how they would like to license their work.


There are 4 main types of licenses that you might come across:

1. Attribution- This type of license allows a person to copy, distribute, display and/or remix the work, or any works that are based on or inspired by the original, as long as the person copying, distributing and/or displaying gives credit where credit is due - you must attribute the work to the creator/artist! (can be for commercial/non-commercial purposes)


2. Non-commercial- A person can do all of the same things with the original work as in the attribution license (as long as the creator/artist is given credit), but only for non-commercial purposes.


3. No derivative works- A person can copy, distribute, and/or display the original work (as long as the creator/artist is given credit), but they can only be "verbatim" copies. No "derivative works," or works that are based on or inspired by the original, are permitted. (can be for commercial/non-commercial purposes)


4. Share Alike - A person can remix, tweak, edit, change, or build upon the original work, but the new piece must be credited to the original artist/creator, and the new piece must carry the exact same license as the original. (can be for commercial/non-commercial purposes)

A couple other licenses exist and should be mentioned, too:

1. Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike - a person may remix, tweak, edit, change, or build upon the original work, but only if the creator/artist is given credit, the piece is used/created for non-commercial purposes only, and the new piece carries the exact same license as the original.


2. Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives - the original piece can be shared in its original form only (no changes whatsoever!), as long as it is used for non-commercial purposes and the creator/artist is given credit!

Here's your test of how well you know your licenses now: what kind of license does the above picture have and what does that mean? Extra credit: Did I adhere to the license?

You Are Now Entering the Twitterverse

I have been an avid tweep for over a year now. I love how it gives me the opportunity to stay in touch with so many people, and up to date on so many avenues of information. This form of micro-blogging is definitely a plus when it comes to social networking, but what place, if any, does this website have in the English classroom?

In my opinion, Twitter can bring so much to the English Ed. community. Here are some of my ideas:

-Last year, in our methods class, our teacher designed an activity where we created a Twitter account for different characters from Romeo and Juliet. We chose pictures to use as their defaults, clever locations and bios to include in their profiles, and even played around with their backgrounds to represent who we thought they were. And these were only the initial great pieces of the process that got us thinking through the perspective of the character! Then, with a partner who chose another character from the play and created a profile, we chose a scene to recreate in tweet-speak. We held a conversation, full of slang, hashtags, and modern language, between Romeo, Mercutio and Tybalt, in the fateful scene where Mercutio is slain. We laughed as we thought of how these characters might tweet, and played around with Shakespeare's language. We could certainly adapt this activity to any text that we read. (If you want an excellent example of a character's Twitter, see @Lord_Voldemort7. But be warned, he is a bit vulgar, critical and extremely sarcastic!)

-In the intro to Twitter video for this mod, the creator showed how some teachers used Twitter to hold book talks, or discussions surrounding a book students were reading in class. I think this is a clever idea, but I think it might work even better if we have students use their tweets as a reading log. We could ask students to read a certain section of the text for homework, and require that they post questions, reactions, comments to the text as they read, using a specific hashtag in each tweet so that we create our own class reading response thread. This could easily turn in to a space for students to share their immediate feelings about the reading with their classmates, almost as if they were sharing the notes a skilled reader might put into the margins of their books. This might be reassuring to students who see that others are confused about the same things they are, get them thinking about the text differently based on the comments others add to the thread, or stir up questions that they want to ask of their classmates. (This might even help with the issue of encouraging students to read outside of school!) These could all be brought in to our classroom discussion about the reading, and as a teacher, this would be awesome because I could see ahead of class what areas we need to talk more about, and what parts of the story are really resonating with the students. What a great starting point and organizational tool for discussion!

-I also love the connection that Twitter gives us to public figures, such as authors. Students could easily hop on Twitter and mention the author in some of their questions or comments about the text. What an awesome experience it would be to have an author respond to or retweet you! Or, an author's Twitter might give students access to their thoughts, possibly on the text, and maybe even links that they can browse about issues within a text or current happenings surrounding it. For example, if you head to Laurie Halse Anderson's Twitter, you can click around to find a recent issue some brought up with her novel Speak being a form of "pornography." Surrounding that post are Halse Anderson's responses to the claims and the outpouring of supportive tweets she received from her fans. Another way to stay current on a text and show students how it's (in some cases, still) relevant by introducing them to current discussions surrounding the text!

-Just as many celebrities offer their followers scavenger hunts, I could tweet different "hunts" to my students. These could involve having my students find something unique within their reading assignment or searching around online for a factoid I set them after. The first person to tweet me the answer wins!

-Since many students might already be using Twitter, I could use it as an easier resource for them. Each day after school, I could quickly tweet a reminder of the homework assignments for that night/weekend (so that they don't forget), or post links that I think might be helpful or interesting to them. The nice part about Twitter is that you pick and choose what you want to explore, so if students weren't interested in a link I post, then that's okay. I like the casual nature of micro-blogging over a class blog for these purposes. It seems like a friendly, gently suggested supplement to what we're doing in class.

-Another purpose I'd like to point out is the "daily" possibilities of Twitter. While I think there can be great benefit from a word of the day, or a quote for each day type activity, it's often difficult to find time for these activities during a 40 minute class period, if you want students to pay them proper attention. A teacher could update her Twitter each morning with one of each (a word and a quote), and students can explore them as much as they'd like. If they already know a word that I choose, then they aren't wasting their time. If they really like a quote and want to discuss it further, they can reply to me or their classmates, or share it with their followers. If I incorporated these into our time in class, I might feel that I'd have to cut students short if there was more that they wanted to do with them-more questions, more discussion, more connections-so that we could accomplish everything that we set out to do, at least on most days. Twitter leaves the door open for whatever they choose to do with any of the daily posts I share with them.

-A final thing I love about Twitter is retweeting. There is a lot of great stuff out there, and a ton of people that one could follow, but it's impossible to take it all in or read all there is to read. What Google Reader has done for the Internet has not yet been developed on Twitter. BUT, if I see something that's worth sharing with my students, or they see something they think we'd like to read, all you have to do is click Retweet. Or, you can RT with a specific user mentioned, so it shares the tweet with that specific person. There are so many times that I'm on Twitter and I see a tweet that reminds me of someone, or that I think would make them laugh, or that they'd love to read, and when I student taught, I often came across things that I would have liked to share with my students. This is just an added bonus feature that I think will help add to the community within the classroom.

These are just a few of the ideas I have come up with or have come across for using Twitter in the classroom. The possibilities truly are endless once you step into the Twittersphere!

Emoticon-mania in the classroom :)

A blog post that I wanted to share is entitled Must Turn in Emoticon to Exit posted about a month ago on the educational blog, Blog, blog blog blog, blog some more (check out my blog roll to visit the blog's home page).

This semester I am taking a Research in Literature course, and we have been talking about the need to conduct informal research in classroom to evaluate how effective our lessons, teaching strategies and approaches are for our students. While this may seem like a daunting task, this blog post offers a simple and fun way to get immediate feedback from your students. Ms. B, the teacher-blogger of this site, shares with us a new exit-slip she is having her students turn in after a lesson to see whether her lessons should be "celebrated, repeated" or "tweaked." I really like this idea, and it is a quick way to know how students feel about the lesson. All too often, I think we as teachers have an idea of how the lesson went in our own minds, but we never reach out to our students to see how our instruction is working for them. And since our teaching goals are aimed at structuring our class and lessons in the best way possible for them (and not for us) to learn and experience our classroom material, it is essential that we get their opinion and take on how things are going. This emoticon exit slip is a really practical way to get a feel for how our students perceive our teaching approach and lesson structures, so we can start to understand how it's actually going for the learners sitting in the desks in our classroom, and not just how we think it's going in our minds.

I give this blog post a:


I love this idea and think that it can be useful for teachers at all levels in all subjects!

Ning Ning Ning

One Ning I found that would be really useful to me in my teaching, and for anyone who is inspired by the idea of using technology for educational purposes, is Technology Integration in Education.

Just by browsing around the site I can see that it would be a great resource for me as a teacher who wants to bring technology into the classroom. Right on the main page, there is a discussion about software/programs that I've never heard of, so I am certain that it would expose me to different technologies to use in the classroom that I'm unaware of even existing! The community seems to be developed in a way, too, that everyone is interested in sharing with one another. They tell about how their experience with the technology went, what they chose to do with it, and what they would suggest to other teachers. One post that really struck my attention was "Skype Collaborative Projects." It seems like a great idea-sharing website that could inspire me to try unique things in my classroom that I would not think of otherwise. They also have webinars posted, which I would love to listen in on/watch, a resources page which I know I will need once I start using technology in the classroom, and they also discuss everyday teacher topics like how cell phones fit in to the classroom. All in all it seems like a great community to be a part of!

Learners or NFL players?

"Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people's experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge."

This quote from Karen Stephenson demonstrates one of the major ideas presented in the connectivism theory of education. In case you haven't noticed, our world has changed significantly in the last twenty years, no-make that decade, wait-last year, even in the last day! The rise of technology has completely changed, and is constantly changing, the way we live our lives in every aspect imaginable. As George Siemens makes clear in his article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and video The Changing Nature of Knowledge, a major difference in the way we live today deals with the way we learn. It was once believed that each individual learned in isolation, in an entirely internal fashion, or as Siemens describes this outdate theory, "learning is something that happens in the head of an individual." It was up to each and every learner to acquire knowledge on their own. Yes, they may be guided by others, but what they knew was dependent on what they did on their own. So, if experience is the best teacher of knowledge, each of us only know what we learned from our own life experiences. Can you imagine all that we could learn and know if only we were able to learn from others and take from them all they had learned in their own individual experiences?

Stop dreaming! It's a reality! Technology has made this possible.

The connectivism theory suggests that learning occurs external to the learner, as they "form connections with other individuals and other sources of information." This means simply that we learn from one another and from the resources we encounter. As Stephenson stated in the quote that opened this post, other people can serve us as sources of knowledge. They can teach us from what they have experienced and from what they have learned simply by sharing it. And with the advent of technology, especially social networking, we are able to connect with people from all over the world who we otherwise would not have access to, which means we are able to learn "exponentially!" It is these interactions with others that "enable us to stay current" with information and new knowledge, which is crucial in a world where knowledge is more rapidly becoming obsolete. And these interactions that we rely on to learn do not necessarily have to involve "others." We can learn so much from a multitude of resources, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, blogs, newscasts, and so on, but what is at stake here is "know-where" or "the understanding of where to find knowledge needed." According to Siemens, "our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we learn today." That means if we are able to tap into different sources of information and make connections between different units of information, then we've already won the knowledge battle. We rely and depend upon our connections, interactions and network to learn.

Which brings me to my analogy. Today's learners are not the triathletes that they once were, trying to understand and acquire as much knowledge as they could on their own, exhausting their brains and pushing themselves to the limits, because their mind was the only one they had to rely on. Today's learners are teammates on an NFL team (not the Bills).



If one player tried to go out and play all alone, he would be tackled by an entire team; it's just impossible for one to succeed on his own. There's no way to do it in isolation.

A team, made up of coaches, players, and trainers, succeed when they work together. Our players are the learners. They learn from the coaches, who train and drill them to learn every angle of the field, every play, every strategy. The trainers teach them another aspect about protecting their bodies, ways to work out, and how to treat an injury. The players rely on these two resources to impart their experience upon them so that they can draw on what these others already know. They also learn from one another, on the field, in practice, and in the locker room. Simply by talking about the game or any topic for that matter, they are learning from each other, about others' experiences during the game, after it, in practice, in the off-season: what works, what doesn't, and how to do something better. These resources represent the people that we surround ourselves with and learn from.

There is some individual work as well, such as watching film, working out on your own, and running rep and drill after rep and drill - passing, tackling, what have you. These practices parallel our interactions with resources that we seek out on our own - encyclopedias, blogs, articles, and so on. And it is this individual work that makes the entire team stronger, or as Siemens describes it in The Network is the Learning, it is "when we connect with a new node [that] the competence of an entire network is enhanced." One player can share with another what he noticed on the film he studied, he can offer advice about what he learned in a previous season or tip that a coach had once given him, and they do this socially. We do the same with the information that we are already familiar with - we share it with others. Each player adds something unique to the network that is the team, and each plays an important role. Because really, when it comes to learning, we all have our own individual strengths and areas of interest that we can bring to the table and share with others. Thus, we all play a unique role in the networks that we belong to.

The only difference between the learners and the players is that when learners come together to create their network, they always win the SuperBowl (of knowledge) because that means they are achieving the "continual learning" and "connectivism" that are essential in today's world if we are to stay "current," which Siemens demands.

I Didn't Know...

Today, I viewed the video "Did You Know?" and now I truly agree that "shift happens."

Some of the things that stood out most to me:

-Computers are soon going to not only exceed the capabilities of the human brain, but eventually the human race! What could this mean for us as humans? Are we going to rely on computers for everything - information, household chores, homework? I think technology making our lives more efficient is a great thing, but when it rules our lives and leaves us dependent upon on it, it might not be so beneficial anymore.

-The facts about the 21-year-olds really struck me. I was just a 21 year-old last month before my birthday. In the 3 years that have passed between the making of this video and last August, how many more hours did my age group accrue in watching TV, talking on the phone, and logging in to the internet? Again, I'm uncomfortable at how much my life revolves around technology! These facts & figures made me want to grab a book and head outdoors to enjoy nature!

-100% of India's 2006 college graduates were fluent in speaking English. When is the U.S. going to wake up? We are one of the few countries that does not educate our students in more than one language from an early age. If only I had started Spanish in 1st or 2nd grade, I might have been fluent by now! I think language is one of the issues that our nation needs to begin focusing more on! Plus, the benefits of a bi-lingual education have shown that students often end up with greater control over both the primary and secondary languages, even more so with the primary than they would if that was the only one they studied (if this is still true from what I learned last fall). Es el tiempo, los Estados Unidos!

-The idea about our students entering career fields that don't even currently exist is both exciting and scary at the same time. How can we as teachers fully prepare our students to be successful in a job field that we know nothing about? I think the questions at the end are valid - what are schools doing to prepare students to be 21st thinkers and workers? This should be a question that all of us, especially as teachers, are asking. What can I do to help my students be better prepared to participate in a world that is growing and evolving exponentially?

-It's really incredible to reflect back on all of the changes that have taken place in my lifetime. I was born in 1988. When I was born, computers were sparse, cell phones were still unheard of in the general population, and the Internet was still just an idea being worked out. My parents had one landline telephone, one television and no computer. Now, today, we each have our own cell phone, our own television, and our own personal computer. This is crazy! The video touched on so many different things that have been created/expanded - eBay, MySpace, the English language, online dating, Google - the list goes on and on. It blows my mind to think that a world existed without these tools or these realities of ours. It's both mind-blowing and exciting at the same time, and I can only imagine all that is to come and what the content of a Did You Know? 5.0 video would include!

from: www.evolutionoftechnology.com

Safety First!

My Top 5 Blog Safety Rules/Policies for Students:

1. Each student must submit a parent/guardian signed waiver that permits you to participate in our classroom blog before we begin. This waiver describes the goals/purpose of the blog and specifies the web address for parents&guardians so that they may monitor our class activity.

2. Be respectful of your blogmates. All criticisms should be constructive and you must give all viewpoints and opinions a chance to be heard.

3. All comments will be approved by the teacher before they are published. Use appropriate language at all times or your response will not be ok'd!

4. Keep personal information limited. Only post with your first name and last initial. Do not provide your email address, username or any other personal information in your response. Do the same when responding to your classmates' posts (use only their first names). Tagging a location to your response (FourSquare or any other software) is prohibited. NO personal photographs should be used for your user profile.

5. Do not communicate with someone you do not know. If you suspect that an unknown user is attempting to participate in our class blog, alert me immediately.

Before we begin working on our blog, I would have a class discussion talking about acceptable Internet practices that they already know of, and I would add in any I think are missing. We would also talk about how all of our classroom guidelines would apply (student-generated rules we come up with at the beginning of the school year) on the blog. On the back of the parent waiver, I would have the class-created blog policies (in addition to these 5 I've listed) and have each student sign off that they agree to follow them. I think Richardson makes a great point when he says "the more documentaion and backup you have...the better" (47). Just the same, the more blog safety policies we discuss with our students, the better!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (about using blogs in the classroom)

1. Creating a forum for (extended) classroom discussion
One of the greatest tools teachers have at their disposal is their students' thoughts, perspectives, experiences and voices. Unfortunately, in a 40 minute class session, it's difficult to take full advantage of what our students have to offer; most times it seems that once the conversation picks up, it's time to start wrapping it up. Additionally, not all students feel confident to speak up and participate in classroom discussions. The blog can help us solve both of these issues! We can post an interesting question or opinion (or more than one!) that was raised at a certain point in class and have students continue responding to those, or post a brand-new topic or question related to our current or upcoming classroom material to have students think about and discuss with their classmates. I have been a major believer in the benefits of using a discussion-based approach in the classroom, because in this manner, students work together to create their own understanding and meaning. The best part of discussing online (versus the classroom) is that students often will feel more comfortable contributing. While some students may simply be shy (and the computer screen might take that away just a bit), it seems that quite often students are somewhat fearful of speaking up in class just in case they say something wrong, or even worse, something that their classmates consider "stupid." When responding with the Internet at their fingertips, they can check their facts using different resources (to ensure that they are correct) and reread their response before posting to make sure it is exactly what they're saying. I love using the blog as another place to allow students to participate! During my experience using the blog, I found that the prompts have to be as far away from directions as possible (one placement required me to be VERY specific and construct my posts like a worksheet) so as to maintain the blog-esque feel. I also decided not to require my students to respond to one another, but found that once they became comfortable with the format and more excited about reading others' posts, they did it entirely on their own! If discussion is the goal, it's important to keep our prompts and set up as conversational as possible. I think if we can do this, students will be much more encouraged to get the conversation going!

2. Giving students opportunities to complete personally meaningful pre-learning exercises
This was not something I did in my blogs, but something that came to me while I was reading. One way I like to make the self-to-text connection for my students when we're reading or learning about any given topic is to have them do some sort of journaling activity that requires them to think about an experience or feeling or idea that we might come across. However, this is not always possible simply due to time constraints or how appropriate a "journal response" is. I would love to use the blog to get students think about certain upcoming ideas or units. Sometimes I could post a writing prompt a few days before the class day we will discuss to get students sharing personal experiences. Other times, I could post a picture and have them write about what they see or feel or think the picture describes. What I thought would be most exciting and effective to use would be simply giving students a topic, word, or idea, and have them browse the Internet (using teacher-suggested links, or ones they find on their own) to learn what they want about the subject. For example, if we are a 10th grade English class, and students are encountering Shakespeare for the 2nd, 3rd time, instead of spending time on learning about/researching Shakespeare in class, students could spend some time learning what they want to know about him on their own. I would ask each student to post a certain number of interesting or surprising facts about the Bard that they did not know before. This would be a great way to compile a good deal of information on the topic, and also help avoid reteaching information to students. One issue I see pop up from unit to unit is the fact that all of our students have a great deal of difference when it comes to prior knowledge. This would be a great way to allow EVERYONE to learn something new. In all of these cases, students will have an opportunity to explore our classroom material, topics and ideas on their own before we encounter them in class.

3. Helping students make connections between our material and popular culture, current issues and their world
I think one of the best ways to engage students in whatever it is we are learning in class is by making the material relevant to their world. One easy way to do this is to make connections between our big ideas or different lessons to popular culture and current issues. Once we get to know our students, we are more in tune with their interests and hobbies. We can use what we know of them to choose an athlete, controversial figure, recent news story, or even music to post a link to read about or embed in our post (in the case of music-divshare.com is a free website to upload Mp3s to if you're interested). I would ask my students to read up on a news story, think about a recent event, ponder over the journey of an athlete, or listen to a song (picked out of 5 from very different genres) and then make a connection/comparison to what we learned in class. For example, before we began reading Macbeth in my 11th grade class last year, we discussed ambition in class, and their blog assignment for that week was to choose a song (ex: Drake, "Successful" or John Lennon "Imagine") and respond to how the topic of ambition was presented in that song, and whether or not they thought it was realistic and if it lined up with their ideas on ambition or their own ambition. Or, towards the end of the Macbeth unit, we discussed people who "cheated" their way to the "top" like the Heene (Balloon Boy) family or the White House Crashers, to name a few. The responses on the blogs were excellent and the conversation spilled over into our classroom, where students wanted to continue talking about those cases of ambition gone wrong and comparing them to King Macbeth.

-Standards (from the Richardson text, pp. 41-42)
#1-Students reading a wide range of print and non-print texts &
#2-Students read a wide range of literature to build an understanding of human experience: The blogs give teachers a space to expose their students to so many more texts (mostly non-print) than they ever could in the classroom and give students additional links and avenues to learn more, if they are interested in furthering their understanding to acquire new information, to respond to, and to learn more about the "human experience."

#4- Students adjust their use of spoken or written language to communicate effectively &
#6-Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions, media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print text:
The blog requires or allows for a different type of language to communicate effectively than a classroom discussion or research paper would, which means that students will have to adjust their usage! And, as many of the posts for an English classroom might involve, students will definitely be critiquing and discussing texts on my blog, and can do so in creative and figurative ways! Each of their responses or different activities will definitely be their own creation, which they will have to use language effectively for.

#7-Students conduct research on issues and interests
#8-Students use a variety of technological & informational resources:
The blog lends itself to having students explore different websites to do their own research on a topic we might discuss, and they will certainly be using a variety of technological and informational resources to do so, along with many other tasks they will complete, as we will use different programs, websites, and educational tools available online.

#11-Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative and critical members of a variety of literacy communities
#12-Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes:
Our social interaction via the blog will certainly allow students to become members of our very own classroom community, and possibly others if that's the direction the blog takes! Hopefully students will find their own motivations and purposes behind completing each blog task along the way, whether it be to learn, to enjoy the experience of being online or a member of our community, and to exchange information.

A few thoughts on my own blog experiences
I am lucky enough to have had the opportunity to use blogs at both of my student teaching placements, which allowed me a great deal of experience. I already mentioned a few things I found to be successful (ways to use the blog) and some things that I learned. I also found that the settings of a blog are crucial to their success. In one placement, my students from all 5 classes posted on the same forum, which was also public. I heard students discussing each others' responses before and after class, students being critical of others' posts (I can't believe that's all he had to say! That topic was awesome!) and students getting really into their posts, which I think was a result of knowing that so many others would see it. My blog at the other school was password protected (only students could see it) and separated by class period. A lot less students posted, and there was a significant amount of enthusiasm lost. I think another big factor was the grading of the blog. At my first placement, grading was more flexible, so I discussed with my students that their blogs would be a certain point value at the end of our unit, but did not grade them week by week, but gave feedback during class because the blogs were referenced so often and became an organic part of our class. My other placement required me to give immediate feedback and grade on a rubric the day after each post was due. The end goal of these blogs were not discussion and discovery, but instead, getting the grade. Our blog died once the rubric was passed back. This was also the placement where my setup modeled a worksheet (as per my requirements from ct). Students only stuck to the directions and did what they thought they had to do to get an A. Just a few things I experienced that I thought were worth mentioning here!

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